Friday, April 25, 2008

Week 3: Dali and Lijiang

Good week this week. Not much to write about. Ran into the two German bikers that I met just outside of Hanoi. Odd, I was just stopped at a high point looking at my map trying to figure out where I was, and they came riding up behind me. We spent the next two days getting up to Dali, but I haven't seen them since. Had a good 160 km ride to Lijiang from there. (If you're ever in China and trying to decide between visiting Dali or Lijiang, GO TO LIJIANG! There's no comparison). Tomorrow I'll be starting possibly the toughest part of the trip. Up to Tiger Leaping Gorge, and then to Zhong Dian at 3200 meters. From there to the passes into western Sichuan that top out over 4500 meters. I'm assuming it'll be pretty much impossible to continue all the way into Qinghai province given the Tibetan troubles (I've already read one guy's blog that tried and got turned around), so I'm pretty sure I'll plan to simply ride straight down to Chengdu once I get to that road. Hopefully that's not closed too, as the only other way around would require backtracking all the way down to Panzihua, which is long and supposedly not very scenic at all. Anyway, I've also read that the PSB may be opening all this stuff up on May 1, so there's a chance that the route up to Qinghai may yet be possible after all.

So anyway, the biking is getting easier, the weather is getting better, and the roads have been much nicer, so we'll see how long this will last.

1 comment:

Tara said...

I love that picture! So glad to hear it's getting better.